"For in the wild of the wind swept pine tree there remains a strength and confidence that stands proud against the raging winds..."

After finishing a short story in 2014, There is This Place, Jenna dove into creating art as a means of representing a kind of magic that she believes exists all around us. Her art is inspired by the rugged and wind swept landscape of Muskoka. It is her hope that it reminds the viewer to stop on occasion and find calm and peace from the magic that is the nature that surrounds us.

Excerpt from Jenna Stewart's artist statement - Wind Swept

Thank you Jenna for creating, sharing, and inspiring us! See more of Jenna's work at www.jennastewart.ca.

Christina MacBean's Simple Complexity opens March 4th. She has chosen to share our gallery space with the musical talents of Elton Adams. Christina, painter/printmaker, and Elton, singer-songwriter and active soldier in the Canadian Military, have found common ground in their shared creative processes. Both artists approach life through the lens of their art.

My centre as an artist regardless of the medium I am using is in the process, which shadows my life’s journey into the world of art. - Christina

Check out the teaser of what is to come on March 4th below. See you there!

We were incredibly fortunate to end our 2016 gallery season with the work of Jacqueline Swanek. The following video attempts to capture the work and stories behind these beautiful watercolours. Jacqueline ended her show with an intimate performative reading that really embodied the intention of the exhibit.

This summer we set out to encourage gratitude through art.

We (us and our campers) were pretty disappointed to have our tags cut down. We actually found them in the trash can with the branches still attached.

Ironically we had just posted about the importance of public art, and the notion that putting something out in public means we need to release our ownership of it. That being said, the intention of this project was to bring encouragement to the community by sharing gratitude through art. We actually hoped that people would take the tags, maybe even be inspired by them. It was discouraging to have had every tag cut down and thrown out before people really had the chance to experience it.

However, out of our disappointment spawned #gratitudetags. Even though the physical art is gone, we wanted to continue the spirit of gratitude through social media. We also hope the community will come by our SPROUTS gallery opening on August 27th to celebrate our young artists and help spread gratitude by creating their own gratitude tag.

Send us a word describing something you are grateful for through #gratitudetags, we'll print it out for you so that you can create your own tag with us on August 27th. We look forward to making art together, and celebrating our young artists.

We are so fortunate to be in Downtown Barrie. We are grateful for all of the amazing people we have already met through Art In House.

Art Should Be Public.

There is a reason why we chose the theme Art City for our July summer camp. We feel very strongly that art needs to be out in the public. Public Art has the ability to send bits of inspiration to everyone who happens to pass by and notice the little details that we so often miss. For the artist, it challenges us to look for opportunities our cities as a canvas can offer.

This was really the concept behind our Dipped Dinos project. We wanted something fun that helped our campers explore the little details of Downtown Barrie, looking for the potential opportunities for "art".

Taking art into the city also forces us to have conversations around the impermanence of public art. We knew that the dinos would eventually be taken. Once our campers were able to let go of the idea that they "owned" the art, they were able to get excited about the idea of coming back to the downtown to see if their work had been moved or taken.

Above were the actual photos taken by the campers (some incredible young photographers!) We also captured our kiddos putting the dinos around the city in the video below. Enjoy:)

Photography pushes us to be responsive.

It's been our third summer of doing camps, and every camp we have done so far has had an element of photography built into it. Despite the work that it takes to make a photo project happen in a week of camp, we are always super excited about the results. This year's photo cubes was no exception.

Photography in camp is tough because it pushes us to be responsive with our programming as there is always the chance that it isn't going to work. We can't have everything planned, prepped and ready to go when the bulk of the work is based on the kids that come into the camp... but wait a minute... isn't that the point??

We don't feel that art is supposed to be packaged and it definitely isn't a one-size-fits-all. We want it to reflect the diversity in the people creating it. I think that's why photography is so exciting. Photography by nature reflects that subject it was intended to capture. Every camp we do has new faces, personalities, and sometimes hilarious combinations of kids. Photo Cubes was meant to capture exactly that... the faces, personalities, and combinations of kids that makes doing summer camp so worthwhile.

Enjoy the video of this summers photo cubes installation! We hope it reflects the amazing kids we get to work with every summer.

It seems like we can't get enough of Dave Duguay at AIH. It began with Corrugation, followed up by Card Tunes/SNAP for Barrie's Culture Days, and now in his latest experimental installation - Aggregate.

Dave pretty much lived at AIH these past few weeks (I think his pillow might still be there) as this show was as much a celebration of his process as it was his completed work.

The opening was a huge accomplishment for Dave, considering the insane number of hours, and the challenges that experimenting with cement created. I think the only thing sweeter than hanging the final glock on the wall was the incredible food provided by Ally at Rabbit Foods.

Huge thanks to Dave for risking with us, inspiring those who came by to watch him in action, and taking time out of an incredibly busy few weeks to share his creative process with our up-and-coming artists.

Our summer programming really sets us up for the rest of our year.

Summer camp often becomes our playground for exploring, experimenting, and creating new opportunities for our young artists to get their creativity on.

As artists, Mar, Jenn, and I get a chance to play just as much as our campers. We try new ways of collaborating with nature, find interesting ways of combining media, and get to celebrate it all with our SPROUTS exhibit in September.

This exhibit brought many new projects to the forefront, especially since this was our first time partnering with Spool Lounge. As you watch the teaser below, consider catching the actual work still on display at AIH.

Even though the work was all done by our campers, we feel like the overall product very much represents where we are going at AIH.

The final video installment from our Summer camps. Come check out the amazing projects from our campers at our SPROUTS gallery show on until Thanksgiving.

SKETCH was an experiment. An experiment meant to bring the creative energy behind the art that we make to the forefront... to be celebrated. It was an experiment because we had an idea of what the outcome would be... but we didn't really know what we'd get.

In the end, SKETCH celebrated 26 artists from different ages, backgrounds and styles, who were brave enough to submit their sketchbooks to us. Through enlarged reproductions of their sketches, ideas, scribbles, music notations, and pastings, we plastered our gallery walls and hung their work from the ceiling. It was overwhelming. We wanted our gallery to become a massive sketchbook.

Check out the video below that shares some of what went on at our opening reception. Huge thanks to our friends from House Art Collective who let us all experiment musically as we celebrated the work of so many artists.

Thanks to all who participated for being so transparent with your process. It was nothing short of courageous to allow others to flip through the details behind what you do.

In this installation a room will be filled with escaping and skittering mice, surely a sight that may make one a bit uncomfortable.

— Joanne Lomas, local artist

If you have been around the Barrie downtown, you will have noticed many of our local business friends with signs stating, "The mice are coming..." The mice have come, taken over, and will be with us the entire month of August.

In our gallery we are always looking for ways to push the interactivity between the artists and those coming to see their work. The subject of Joanne Lomas' exhibit was definitely unique, but the intention behind her show was very much a familiar concept for us at AIH.

Mouse in House is an experience in which you are invited to come in to Joanne's house and physically interact with her work. Joanne has set the stage, and we are invited to participate. Throughout the opening reception we noticed many of the mice were travelling through the exhibit, popping up in places Joanne had not originally placed them. It was if people interacting with the exhibit brought an unexpected life to the installation. Besides, we all know real mice adapt to their environments!

If you weren't able to make the opening reception, come by AIH during our gallery hours to be a part of Mouse in House. In the meantime, check out some of the behind the scenes footage from the show.

Collaboration.

So inspiring to round out our Art City camp by giving our campers a little taste of the importance of collaboration. We enjoyed collaborating with each other and with nature over our last few days creating magnetic newspaper planters and finishing our photo transfer installation.

We hope you enjoy watching the video as much as we enjoyed creating the projects. Our planters were inspired by the incredible work being done at Broken City Lab. We tweaked them a bit with wire, but are looking forward to watching our flowers bloom!

Footage from the last few days of art city. What an amazing week! A blast collaborating with each other and nature! I Dreamt song for the video was shared under CC license by VJ Memes.

An Artsy Collaboration

The Lakeshore Mews on the waterfront in Barrie continues to ooze with artsiness and we have Spool Lounge to thank for teaching us new ways of creative expression!

We have been so fortunate to partner with Susan Kendal and Laurena Green from the Spool Lounge for this past Art City Camp, and we are excited about more SUPER ARTSINESS to come during our Watermelon Seeds Camp in August.

Check out the fun textile work our Art City campers did this past week below.

Huge thanks to our friends at Spool Lounge.

Footage take at Spool Lounge during Art City Summer Camp. Home Tonight music by DoKashiteru shared under CC license through ccmixter.org

It's all in the process.

We believe that the art-making process is as important as the final product. Process is the reason this blog exists. Check out the art-making currently happening at our Art City summer camp. We have an incredibly creative group... and it's only been 3 days!

We have welcomed Tatyana Abel and all of her creative and thoughtful work this month. On the Eve of the show ending, we felt it was only fitting to capture some of visual quality of her work as well as the often complex rationale as to why it was created.

Ourselves, Behind Ourselves Concealed was such a visual show, full of incredible textures, complimented by often dark, almost disturbing imagery that coalesced into "Bliss" (as she refers her final pieces as in the artist talk cited below). Make sure to check out the artist talk video as she describes the characters, process, and inspiration behind Ourselves Concealed.

Our walls will miss Tatyana's attention to detail and her love for found materials, all of which has made this show a memorable one.

The gallery walls have felt empty for the last few months, they are officially alive again with the opening of Super Atomic Blaster by Don German. I don’t know if it was the excitement of starting our Gallery Season for 2015, or that I was bordering on a sugar-induced coma from all the retro candy I managed to stuff my face with, but I left the opening night ecstatic to be a part of this Art in House thing.

Interactive.

Don’s show embodied so much of what we are about at AIH; it was evident by the way the show was received. The shows in the past have always been about celebrating the work; Super Atomic Blaster taught us to celebrate the interactive nature of the work.

We aren’t a big space, which often means the crowds at the shows usually spill out from the gallery side, into the room-with-the-orange-wall. Don’s show was completely different. It didn’t matter how many people showed up, they packed themselves into the gallery to experience his work.

It was actually pretty funny at times to see the excitement in a bunch of adults over toys, the subject of Don’s show. “I feel like I’m living my childhood over again!” was a sentiment felt by more than one person that night as we all enjoyed the artistry of Don’s work. It wasn’t long before his custom-made play table became a frenzy of battle noises, laughter, and nostalgia.

Co-Authorship.

It was clear that interactivity was all part of Don’s plan for the show. In that same spirit, part of our plan for this blog was to showcase the artist’s thought process for the show, by the actual artist’s themselves. Below is our first attempt at co-authorship. Fire away Don.

Conception.

Hello All!

Within the world of the toybox imagination of king and play is how an internal history of events begins to build, each character and object becoming legend, or at least that’s how I saw my own childhood.

The notion of play and how the act of playing can cause one to simply drift into their imagination is a strong and powerful phenomenon; one that I had experienced through my childhood. In building this exhibition finding the multitude of ways to convey this feeling was the true challenge, and with that as the focal point of the show I threw everything at it, including an adult height playtable. And so I begin to find ways to have a dialogue with my large collection of old mismatched toys, and it became a long tale of reverence, revision and reappropriation.

Feedback.

Seeing how the viewers became part of the show was thrilling. It simply took one person to begin investigating the toybox, fiddling with objects to start the true show. People began interacting, not knowing others around the table, taking photos of their installation with smart phones to share with others. It was fantastic.The space filled with a much more vibrant atmosphere, sparking conversations and interactions among patrons who did not show up together. Everyone at A.I.H. complimented and fed back into the spirit of the show, with contributions of retro styled candies as well as old toy commercials which added heavily to the atmosphere.

Celebrating the Unexpected.

Working with kids is always an adventure, you learn to expect the unexpected. You realize in the end, its the unexpected that you end up longing for.

We expected a lot of fun this summer, and we were also excited at the idea of kids creating meaningful work that would hopefully fuel our campers' love of art. However, when we think back to the camps this summer it was the un-planned moments that made this experience mean so much to us.

Austin Kleon in his TED talk for Steal Like An Artist, explains the fact that if you were to draw 2 lines in parallel and then ask someone how many lines they see, most will say 2. He then goes on to explain the phenomenon of negative space and the realization that 1+1 can equal 3 as the parallel lines create a third in-between. Ken Burns also identifies that this reality can also be found in story, noting that the often elusive "3" is what makes a story really great.

Our "3" came this summer in the small inspirations that snuck their way out from in-between our programming. These tiny moments that you could never plan, but you learned to look for because they made the experience unforgettable. Here are just a few I won't forget...

1. Role-playing TV shows in our retro TV shell.

2. Sitting by the stream, with our feet dangling in the water.

3. Stuffed-animal visitors that kept growing in number, joining us for snacks, and modeling for our sketchbooks.

7. Playing with the paint drippings, so much more fun than actually doing the project.

8. Sidewalk Chalk Taco.

9. Absolute silence at the sight of Aganetha Dyck's collaboration with bees.

10. The tree-drawings that actually worked

It was these experiences we wanted to celebrate in SPROUTS. We wanted our walls to reflect not just the artistry in the work, but the in-betweens that made it worth doing again. Come by and check out the work of our amazing young artists. We hope you see the unexpected.

This past Saturday, Dave Duguay stopped by to take his work off of our walls. Watching his work come down, I was reminded again why we are doing this Art in House thing.

Connecting with local artists like Dave Duguay, providing a platform for others to see their talent, and being a part of their vision is incredibly inspirational (not to mention the great backdrop his work was to the music shows and other workshops we hosted this summer). As his work came off the walls, it was clear our gallery would still resonated with the creativity his work represented.

The piece he wasn't able to take down was his Confiscated piece (yeah!). Since it was drawn directly on our wall, its obvious that Dave's impact on our Gallery space is more than just representational. It has a physical presence that will continue to exist under the layers of primer and white paint. It's going to be tough to paint over it for our upcoming Sprouts Gallery show. Despite wanting to cut out the drywall, we are going to leave it to be painted over, knowing the creativity that oozed from his work will somehow continue to seep from our walls throughout our upcoming shows.

So this is our official farewell to our Corrugation show, but definitely not our final farewell to Dave. We are looking forward to continued opportunities to connect, partner, and get corrugated with such an incredible artist and truly amazing person.

Thanks Dave and we look forward to your next project... my son is excited as he heard cars might be involved?

Its not too often that you have an entire audience of 5-10yr-olds entranced, but when we showed them the work of Tim Knowles and Aganetha Dyck they were exactly that. Watching the partnership these artists had with "nature" created an almost surreal, movie-set-like atmosphere, as if everyone's eyes were recording every nuance of the work created between artist and nature.

Its easy to philosophize about why these connections with our natural communities are so important, as being outside seems to impact every facet of who we are physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We were reminded this week that it's a lot more simple than we often analyze it to be. As you watch the faces of our campers in the video below, it's clear that nature reminds us that we just belong. Enjoy.

It's been a few days since Tuesday's intense thunderstorm. On Wednesday we happened upon our outdoor Corrugation sign, shredded, soggy, and half lying on the ground. My first response as any business "owner" was to replace it, possibly even making it a bit more substantial, since cardboard really can't handle sideways flying rain. This prompted an interesting discussion over what to do with the sign.

As Jenn, Max, and I were chatting about what to do with it, my concern was with the perception we are giving off to people walking by, wondering if we might look lazy or disinterested with the outward appearance of our space. Max seemed fine with the idea of just leaving it. First off, how many times do you staple up cardboard outside, expecting it to remain? Secondly, could this be seen as a collaboration with nature? Understanding that when you put something out there you release ownership, knowing the degradation of the piece can be part of the evolution of it. You couldn't really manufacture the uniqueness that a crazy rain storm has on a piece, adding incredible value to the piece itself.

The concept of Nature being a collaborator is really central to our upcoming camp "watermelon seeds". We want to recognize that we can partner with nature to push creativity in a different direction. A direction that recognizes that the best ideas may not be individual ideas, and that our human communities exist as a result of our connection to something beyond ourselves. It's a connection that can't be scripted, or pre-determined, but makes space for outcomes that allow for adaptation and unexpectedness. Making room for these unexpected collaborations pushes us as artists, teachers, and co-owners to let go of control.

It's incredible to see artists recognizing the value of Nature as a collaborator. Artists like Aganetha Dyck and Tim Knowles have made such an impression on us and our understanding of how powerful these natural collaborations can be. Take a look at their amazing work and be inspired.

Our now dry, torn, cardboard is not nearly as inspirational as a collaboration with bees, or tree drawings, but its representational of an artistic partner that we value. So I think we'll leave the sign, looking forward to things to come.